Microlithography (also called photolithography or simply lithography) is a technology for the fabrication of integrated circuits, liquid crystal displays and other microstructured devices. The process of microlithography, in conjunction with the process of etching, is used to pattern features in thin film stacks that have been formed on a substrate, for example a silicon wafer. At each layer of the fabrication, the wafer is first coated with a photoresist which is a material that is sensitive to radiation, such as deep ultraviolet (DUV), vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) or extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light. Next, the wafer with the photoresist on top is exposed to projection light in a projection exposure apparatus. The apparatus projects a mask containing a pattern onto the photoresist so that the latter is only exposed at certain locations which are determined by the mask pattern. After the exposure the photoresist is developed to produce an image corresponding to the mask pattern. Then an etch process transfers the pattern into the thin film stacks on the wafer. Finally, the photoresist is removed. Repetition of this process with different masks results in a multi-layered microstructured component.
A projection exposure apparatus typically includes an illumination system for illuminating the mask, a mask stage for aligning the mask, a projection objective for imaging the mask on the photoresist, and a wafer alignment stage for aligning the wafer coated with the photoresist.
As the technology for manufacturing microstructured devices advances, there are ever increasing demands also on the illumination system. Ideally, the illumination system illuminates each point of the illuminated field on the mask with projection light having a well defined irradiance and angular distribution. The term angular distribution describes how the total light energy of a light bundle, which converges towards a particular point in the mask plane, is distributed among the various directions along which the rays constituting the light bundle propagate.
The angular distribution of the projection light impinging on the mask is usually adapted to the kind of pattern to be projected onto the photoresist. For example, relatively large sized features may involve a different angular distribution than small sized features. The most commonly used angular distributions of projection light are referred to as conventional, annular, dipole and quadrupole illumination settings. These terms refer to the irradiance distribution in a system pupil surface of the illumination system. With an annular illumination setting, for example, only an annular region is illuminated in the pupil surface. Thus there is only a small range of angles present in the angular distribution of the projection light, and thus all light rays impinge obliquely with similar angles onto the mask.
Different approaches are known in the art to modify the angular distribution of the projection light in the mask plane so as to achieve the desired illumination setting. In the simplest case a stop (diaphragm) including one or more apertures is positioned in a pupil surface of the illumination system. Since locations in a system pupil surface translate into angles in a Fourier related field plane such as the mask plane, the size, shape and location of the aperture(s) in the pupil surface determines the angular distributions in the mask plane. However, a significant fraction of the light produced by the light source is absorbed by the stop. This fraction cannot contribute to the exposure of the resist, which results in a reduced throughput of the apparatus. Furthermore, any change of the illumination setting involves a replacement of the stop. This makes it difficult to finally adjust the illumination setting, because this would involve a very large number of stops that have apertures with slightly different sizes, shapes or locations.
Many common illumination systems therefore include adjustable elements that make it possible, at least to a certain extent, to continuously vary the illumination of the pupil surface. Conventionally, a zoom axicon system including a zoom objective and a pair of axicon elements are used for this purpose. An axicon element is a refractive lens that has a conical surface on one side and is usually plane on the opposite side. By providing a pair of such elements, one having a convex conical surface and the other a complementary concave conical surface, it is possible to radially shift light energy. The shift is a function of the distance between the axicon elements. The zoom objective makes it possible to alter the size of the illuminated area in the pupil surface.
With such a zoom axicon system only conventional and annular illumination settings can be produced. For other illumination settings, for example dipole or quadrupole illumination settings, additional stops or optical raster elements are involved. An optical raster element produces, for each point on its surface, an angular distribution which corresponds in the far field to certain illuminated areas. Often such optical raster elements are realized as diffractive optical elements, and in particular as computer generated holograms (CGH). By positioning such an element in front of the pupil surface and placing a condenser lens in between, it is possible to produce almost any arbitrary intensity distribution in the system pupil surface. The condenser may be formed by a zoom optical system such that it has a variable focal length. Furthermore, an additional axicon system may be used to vary, at least to a limited extent, the illumination distribution produced by the optical raster element.
However, the zoom axicon system provides only limited adjustability of the illumination setting. For example, it is not possible to vary the distance between a pair of opposite poles of a quadrupole illumination setting without affecting also the other pair of poles. To this end another optical raster element has to be used that is specifically designed for this particular intensity distribution in the pupil surface. The design, production and shipping of such optical raster elements is a time consuming and costly process, and thus there is little flexibility to adapt the light intensity distribution in the pupil surface to the desired properties of the operator of the projection exposure apparatus.
For increasing the flexibility in producing different angular distribution in the mask plane, it has recently been proposed to use mirror arrays that illuminate the pupil surface.
In EP 1 262 836 A1 the mirror array is realized as a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) including more than 1000 microscopic mirrors. Each of the mirrors can be tilted in two different planes perpendicular to each other. Thus radiation incident on such a mirror device can be reflected into (substantially) any desired direction of a hemisphere. A condenser lens arranged between the mirror array and the pupil surface translates the reflection angles produced by the mirrors into locations in the pupil surface. This known illumination system makes it possible to illuminate the pupil surface with a plurality of circular spots, wherein each spot is associated with one particular microscopic mirror and is freely movable across the system pupil surface by tilting this mirror.
Similar illumination systems are known from US 2006/0087634 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 7,061,582 B2 and WO 2005/026843 A2. Arrays of tiltable mirrors have also been proposed, for the same purpose, for EUV illumination systems.